The Alps

by Arnold Lunn

The early mountaineers entered into a literary field that was almost unexplored. They could write of their hill journeys with the assurance of men branching out into unknown byways. They could linger on the commonplaces of hill travel, and praise the freedom of the hills with the air of men enunciating a paradox. To glorify rough fare, simple quarters, a bed of hay, a drink quaffed from the mountain stream, must have afforded Gesner the same intellectual pleasure that Mr. Chesterton derives from the praise of Battersea and Beer. And this joy in emotions which had yet to be considered trite lingers on even into the more sedate pages of Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers. The contributors to those classic volumes were rather frightened of letting themselves go; but here and there one lights on some spontaneous expression of delight in the things that are the very flesh and blood of our Alpine experience—the bivouac beneath the stars, the silent approach of dawn, the freemasonry of the rope, the triumph of the virgin summit. “Times have changed since then,” wrote Donald Robertson in a recent issue of The Alpine Journal—

“Times have changed since then, and with them Alpine literature. Mountaineering has become a science, and, as in other sciences, the professor has grown impatient of the average intelligence, and evolved his own tongue. To write for the outside public is to incur the odium of ‘popular science,’ a form of literature fascinating to me, but anathema to all right-minded men. Those best qualified to speak will only address themselves to those qualified to listen, and therefore only in the jargon of their craft. But the hall-mark of technical writing is the assumption of common knowledge. What all readers know for themselves, it is needless and even impertinent to state. Hence, in the climbing stories written for the elect, the features common to all climbs must either be dismissed with a brief reference, or lightly treated as things only interesting in so far as they find novel expression.”

Those who worship Clio the muse will try to preserve the marriage of history and literature, but those whose only claim to scholarship is their power to collate facts by diligent research, those who have not the necessary ability to weave these facts into a vital pattern, will always protest their devotion to what is humorously dubbed scientific history. So in the Alpine world, which has its own academic traditions and its own mandarins, you will find that those who cannot translate emotions (which it is to be hoped they share) into language which anybody could understand are rather apt to explain their discreet silence, by the possession of a delicate reserve that forbids them to emulate the fine writing of a Ruskin or the purple patches of Meredith.

Now, it should be possible to discriminate between those who endeavour to clothe a fine emotion in worthy language, and those who start with the intention of writing finely, and look round for a fine emotion to serve as the necessary peg. Sincerity is the touchstone that discriminates the fine writing that is good, and the fine writing that is damnable. The emotions that are the essence of mountaineering deserve something better than the genteel peroration of the average climbing book. Alpine literature is a trifle deficient in fine frenzy. The Mid-Victorian pose of the bluff, downright Briton, whose surging flood of emotions is concealed beneath an affectation of cynicism, is apt to be tedious, and one wonders whether emotions so consistently and so successfully suppressed really existed within those stolid bosoms.

A great deal of Alpine literature appeals, and rightly appeals, only to the expert. Such contributions are not intended as descriptive literature. They may, as the record of research into the early records of mountaineering and mountains, supply a much-needed link in the history of the craft. As the record of new exploration, they are sure to interest the expert, while their exact description of routes and times will serve as the material for future climbers’ guides. But this is not the whole of Alpine literature, and the danger is that those who dare not attempt the subjective aspects of mountaineering should frighten off those who have the necessary ability by a tedious repetition of the phrase “fine writing,” that facile refuge of the Philistine. The conventional Alpine article is a dreary affair. Its humour is antique, and consists for the most part in jokes about fleas and porters, and in the substitution of long phrases for simple ones. Its satire is even thinner. The root assumption that the Alpine climber is a superior person, and that social status varies with the height above sea level, recurs with monotonous regularity. The joke about the tripper is as old as the Flood, and the instinct that resents his disturbing presence is not quite the hall-mark of the æsthetic soul that some folk seem to think. It is as old as the primitive man who espied a desirable glade, and lay in wait for the first tourist with a club. “My friends tell me,” writes a well-known veteran, “that I am singular in this strange desire to avoid meeting the never-ceasing stream of tourists, and I am beginning to believe that they are right, and that I am differently constituted from other people.” The author of this trite confession has only to study travel literature in general and Alpine literature in particular to discover that quite commonplace folk can misquote the remark about the madding crowd, and that even members of the lower middle class have been known to put the sentiment into practice. A sense of humour and a sense for solitude are two things which their true possessors are chary of mentioning.

It might be fairly argued that the average mountaineer does not pretend to be a writer, fine or otherwise, that he describes his climbs in a club journal intended for a friendly and uncritical audience, and that he leaves the defence of his sport to the few men who can obtain the hearing of a wider audience. That is fair comment; and, fortunately, mountaineering is not without the books that are classics not only of Alpine but also of English literature.

First to claim mention is Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers, a volume “so fascinating,” writes Donald Robertson, “so inspiring a gospel of adventure and full, free life, that the call summoned to the hills an army of seekers after the promised gold.” That is true enough. But the charm of these pages, which is undoubted, is much more due to the fact that the contributors had a good story to tell than to any grace of style with which they told it. The contributors were drawn from all walks of life—barristers, Manchester merchants, schoolmasters, dons, clergymen, and scientists; and unless we must affect to believe that Alpine climbing inspires its devotees with the gift of tongues, we need not appear guilty of irreverence for the pioneers if we discriminate between the literary and intrinsic merit of their work. They were educated men. They did not split their infinitives, and they could express their thoughts in the King’s English, a precedent not always followed by their successors. We must, however, differentiate between the Alpine writing which gives pleasure because of its associations, and the literature which delights not only for its associations and story, but also for its beauty of expression. Let us, as an example, consider two passages describing an Alpine dawn—

“We set out from the bivouac at three in the morning. The night was cloudless, and the stars shone with a truly majestic beauty. Ahead of us, we could just see the outline of the great peak we proposed to attack. Gradually, the east lightened. The mountains became more distinct. The eastern sky paled, and a few minutes later the glorious sun caught the topmost peaks, and painted their snows with the fiery hues of dawn. It was a most awe-compelling spectacle.”

This passage may please us, not because the language is fine or the thoughts subtly expressed, but simply because the scenes so inadequately described recall those which we ourselves have witnessed. The passage would convey little to a man who had never climbed. Now consider the following—

“On the glacier, the light of a day still to be born put out our candles.... We halted to watch the procession of the sun. He came out of the uttermost parts of the earth, very slowly, lighting peak after peak in the long southward array, dwelling for a moment, and then passing on. Opposite, and first to catch the glow, were the great mountains of the Saasgrat and the Weisshorn. But more beautiful, like the loom of some white-sailed ship far out at sea, each unnamed and unnumbered peak of the east took and reflected the radiance of the morning. The light mists which came before the sun faded.”...